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United States Patent | 6,058,370 |
Church ,   et al. | May 2, 2000 |
A method of forecasting the demand for ambulance services based upon a determination from the historical record of the number of currently active calls at the time each new call is received. The method may utilize records of specific calls history including the time each call was received and the time each call was completed, or it may use information on the number of calls received each hour to simulate specific calls history. The method may be extended to a "third dimension" to better account for the effect of service demands and staffing levels in preceding hours. The method has application to other services having the characteristics of limited available service resources, randomly occurring service requests but historically-repeating levels of demand, and relatively long service times.
Inventors: | Church; Richard L. (Santa Barbara, CA 93111); Sorensen; Paul A. (5370 Hollister Ave., #5, Santa Barbara, CA 93111) |
Appl. No.: | 144738 |
Filed: | September 1, 1998 |
Current U.S. Class: | 705/10; 701/1; 705/5; 705/7; 705/8; 705/9 |
Intern'l Class: | G06F 017/60 |
Field of Search: | 705/1,5,6,7,8,9,10,13 701/1 706/905 |
5289368 | Feb., 1994 | Jordan et al. | 705/8. |
5459656 | Oct., 1995 | Fields et al. | 705/7. |
5541835 | Jul., 1996 | Dextraze et al. | 705/10. |
Singh, V.K., et al., "Operation Research for Estimation of an Ambulance Requirement in a Hospital," Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 33, 1990, pp. 59-63. Larson,Richard C., "Ambulamce Deployment With the Hypercube Queuing Model," Medical Instrumentation, vol. 16, No. 4, Jul.-Aug. 1982. Baker, J.R., et al., "Determination of an Optimal Forecast Model for Ambulance Demand Using Goa; Programming," Journal of the Operational Research Society, vol. 37, No. 11, 1986, pp. 1047-1059. Kvalseth, Tarold O., et al., "A Demand Model for Emergency Ambulance Service in an Urban Area," Int Conf on Cybern and Soc, Nov. 5-7, 1973, pp. 176-177. Available from IEEE (73 CHO 799-7 SMC). Tandberg, Dan, et al., "Time Series Forecasts of Ambulance Run Volume," The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, May 1998, pp. 232-237. |
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ Calls received -- Monday, 2-3 p.m. ______________________________________ Week 1: 8 Week 11: 11 Week 2: 9 Week 12: 10 Week 3: 9 Week 13: 7 Week 4: 11 Week 14: 8 Week 5: 11 Week 15: 10 Week 6: 8 Week 16: 7 Week 7: 13 Week 17: 7 Week 8: 8 Week 18: 8 Week 9: 8 Week 19: 7 Week 10: 8 Week 20: 10 ______________________________________
TABLE 2 ______________________________________ Time Activity Unit # ______________________________________ 2:02 completed call unit 6 2:03 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 8 2:09 completed call unit 5 2:12 completed call unit 3 2:16 completed call unit 11 2:20 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 11 2:30 completed call unit 8 2:32 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 6 2:32 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 5 2:33 completed call unit 2 2:33 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 8 2:40 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 2 2:42 completed call unit 4 2:47 completed call unit 11 2:53 completed call unit 1 2:54 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 9 2:55 call rcv'd - unit dispatched unit 3 ______________________________________